Building Self Confidence & A Positive Mental Attitude: The 5 Obstacles You Need To Overcome

Perhaps you’ve found yourself comparing yourself to others or not feeling confident about your body, your intelligence or maybe even your likeability factor.

Today more than ever people are putting so much emphasis on looking like the “fitness star, or cover model” that the lose their self confidence.

Years ago I started out as a scrawny and insecure teenager. Back then there was no internet and magazines where the people I compared myself too.

For many years, I never thought I was big enough, strong enough or lean enough. I didn’t realize it but this comparison was chipping away at my self confidence.

Eventually I broke through this barrier by hiring great coaches and leveraging a ton of personal development. Since that time I’ve been coaching people for over 20 years and I see the same challenges coming up for people no matter how they look.

When it comes to reaching your health and fitness goals, there’s much more to success than simply choosing the right program.

Far too many people put all them emphasis on making sure that whatever program they choose to use, it’s the one that everyone seems to be having success with.

And while it’s great that you are putting care into choosing the proper path, you need to look at more than that.

Often, there are other factors that could, without you realizing it, hold you back from seeing the results that you desire.

Curious what these are?

Check out the video below where I share with you five obstacles that can prevent you from realizing true success.

Were you guilty of any of these? Most of us are – or have been at one time or another.

In order to get past these problems and really strive to see optimal success, you must learn how to adopt a positive mental attitude.

Easier said than done, right?

Building self confidence and your own self-belief that you can and will see results takes time, effort, and energy.

Can it be done?

You bet.

Everyone has the power to do this. It’s all about putting the right steps in place.

Let me share with you right now 13 tips that you can use to go about building your self-confidence and learning how to achieve your goals.

1. Find A Mentor

So you’re ready to start your fitness journey but aren’t feeling so confident about your ability to succeed. You may have this nagging feeling of doubt based on past diet or fitness attempts you’ve had before.

Or, perhaps someone has come right out and told you that you would never achieve the level of conditioning that you desire (and this person, could be yourself!).

Whatever the case may be, a mentor could be the best thing for you. A mentor is someone who is essentially in your corner, so to speak, giving you words of wisdom and encouragement.

Note that they are not necessarily coaching you along, but rather, are serving as an inspiration.

If you can connect with this mentor regularly and they can support your efforts, showing that they believe you can do it, this can go a long way towards boosting your own self-confidence that you are on track to success.

When you don’t believe in yourself, if you see others who do believe in you, this may just be enough to tilt your frame of mind in the right direction.

Many people are heavily swayed by negativity in their life. Perhaps someone told them when they were younger that they ‘couldn’t’ and now they carry that belief with them everywhere they go in many things they attempt to do.

It’s time to shake these beliefs. Remember that you can.

Find someone who you respect and look up to who believes in you and that can kick-start your own belief systems.

The next must-do if you hope to boost your own self-belief in yourself is to set realistic goals from the start.

Too many people ‘shoot themselves in the foot’ before they even get started.

Let’s say you currently weight 200 pounds. You want to get down to 150 pounds.

If you set the goal to do this by the end of the season, chances are good it’s not going to happen.

While it’s not impossible to lose 50 pounds in 3-4 months, for most people, it’s a very hard goal to obtain.

If your goal is a little too aggressive, you’ll feel defeated very quickly upon starting when you aren’t seeing the rate of results that you need to achieve success.

This does one thing. Crushes your self-esteem. You’ll begin to think that you really must be a failure because once again, you haven’t reached your goal.

If you had set a more appropriate goal in the first place – say to lose 10 pounds by the end of the season, you’d likely have had no trouble doing this and as such, would have gotten a boost to your self-esteem.

So choose your goals wisely.

This small adjustment can have a very large influence on the results that you see.

3.Get A Support Buddy
In addition to getting yourself a mentor, also consider getting yourself a support buddy as well.

What’s the difference?

A mentor is someone who you really look up to and respect. They are someone who has some level of authority. It’s someone who’s opinion of you really matters.

A support buddy on the other hand is someone who’s more at the same level as you. It’s someone that you still think highly of but who is more of a friend or close acquaintance. Perhaps a family member in some cases.

The role of this person is to be there for you during the hard times and provide support and encouragement when you feel like giving up.

If you are someone who tends to be held back by negative thinking and beliefs, they can remind you that these thoughts you have are not based on true reality.

This can help you stay focused and on the right path. Having a support system in place as you strive to reach your goals can make a world of difference in whether or not you stick with them.

You don’t necessarily need a number of people who can play this role, you just need one or two individuals that you know you can trust and speak to whenever you are struggling.

They can often help put into perspective that your negative beliefs are not valid and help turn your frame of mind around.

4.Create An Achievements Journal Here’s a great technique that few people ever even think about doing: an achievement journal.

While some people are the type to journal on a regular basis, few journal when they are feeling good about life.

Instead, they are journaling when they’re sad, unhappy, frustrated, or are down for some other reason.

It’s time that this changed.

You need to journal when you are happy as well.

Start keeping track of all the positive milestones you achieve. When you accomplish something – no matter how small it may seem – write it down. Take note of that achievement and feel good about the fact that you’ve done it.

Then every so often, take the time to read back through this achievements journal whenever you are feeling down. It’s one of the best ways to boost your own self-confidence and help yourself see that you can, in fact, achieve the goals that you set out to.

It’s just far too easy to get caught up in all the little things that you feel you aren’t doing, while completely overlooking the things that you are doing. Sometimes all you need is a good reminder of this to help jumpstart your self-confidence level.

5.Do One Scary Thing Every Day
Here’s a fun one for you – starting today, try and do one thing that scares you.

Even if it’s just a little, make a point to do something that is beyond your comfort zone.

It doesn’t even have to be fitness or nutrition related.

It could be as simple as striking up a conversation with the stranger standing in front of you at the check-out line while you are picking up groceries.

What’s the point of this?

The reason this can help you is because it will shock you that you actually did it.

Chances are, you may have thought about doing it before but figured you were too shy, too intimidated, too scared, too uncertain of yourself – and on and on the list goes.

Push yourself to do it. When you do, you’ll shock your brain. You’ll realize that you’re stronger than you initially thought.

And even these small things can lead to you feeling far more powerful and confident in yourself than you were before.

You’ll come to see that you can do things that you want. If you have gotten into the habit of playing the ‘victim’ card – thinking you are ‘too much of this’ or ‘too much of that’ to do something to change your life, this challenge can help you bust past that. It will be uncomfortable at first and as the name suggests, quite scary, but this simple challenge, if you do it, can transform your life.

6.Spend More Time Doing What You’re Good At Everyone has things that they are good at.

While at times, it may feel like this simply doesn’t apply to you – there is nothing that you are good at, trust me, you have your strengths.

There are things that you can do that few other people can. It’s time that you realized that.

Stop for a moment and think about what gifts you have been given.

This might mean recalling back to your childhood days and thinking about what others tended to compliment you on.

What did they always say you were exceptionally well at? Or, as an adult, where do you tend to really lose track of time?

Where do you ‘find your flow’, so to speak?

Chances are, it’s these activities that you excel at. Once you know what these activities are, start spending more time doing them.

They will help you discover just how gifted and talented you really are.

This again will help those people who feel like they aren’t good at anything – that they can never achieve success no matter how hard they try.

As you use this to help with building self-confidence, you will then become more confident to try new things – including that health and fitness program you’ve been wanting to try.

Few of us really spend enough time doing things we love and are good at, so do your best to change that.

7.Reflect – Often
Reflection is another great way to help you push yourself forward and achieve the life that you want to lead.

What you should start doing is taking a bit of time to reflect back on your life to date.

What have you done that you are proud of? What are you less proud of?

And more importantly, what do you wish you would have done that you now regret?

And why didn’t you do it in the first place?

Looking at this – and really trying to uncover your true reasons for not doing something can help you learn important information about yourself.

Perhaps you didn’t because you weren’t self-confident enough to go after what it was that you wanted.

Or maybe you didn’t because you didn’t think the time is right.

Here’s a lesson: the time is never right. Those who achieve results in life do it because it is happening NOW.

Not because they were in the perfect position to move forward.

They didn’t wait until some grand sign came into place telling them to take action.

They did it when the opportunity presented itself.

Reflecting back on chances you didn’t take can help you realize whether you are putting your life on hold a little too often because things aren’t quite ‘right’.

The more often you do this, the more likely you are to start taking action to avoid feeling this way any longer. Remember, each day comes around once.

If you keep putting things off because the timing isn’t quite right or you don’t feel skilled enough to even try, soon, you will run out of time.

Then you definitely won’t be achieving what you want. It’s far better to try and fail than to not try at all.

Remember that next time your inner self is telling you that you can’t because you just aren’t ready or good enough.

Sometimes the best way to help boost your own self-confidence is to help boost someone else’s. Here again, this doesn’t necessarily have to relate to your own health and fitness program.

For example, let’s say you are really good at finances. A friend comes and explains that she is having trouble saving for a new house her and her husband want to buy.

Consider teaching her (with her permission of course) a better way to manage her finances. Sharing your own expertise in the subject is a great way to boost your own self-confidence, while helping another person out at the same time.

And, this boost you get to your own self-confidence can then transfer over to your fitness and nutrition program as well.

This again takes realizing what it is that you are good at first. Take some time to realize your own strengths and achievements. This will then position you to share those with other people.

9.Compare Regularly, But Only With Yourself

If your mission is to start building self confidence, the one thing that you need to stop right now is comparisons with others.

This is going to get you nowhere. If you are constantly comparing yourself to other people, thinking about how much better they are than you, what they have that you do not have, how they can do certain things and you cannot, and so forth, you will only be left feeling worse about yourself.

From this point forward, the only person you are comparing yourself with is your own self.

Reflect back often on where you started and where you are now. Have you made progress? Even if it’s just a small amount of progress, it’s something to be proud of.

Use this to build yourself up.

You have no control over other people, so constantly comparing yourself to them removes all the power away from you.

You want to be focused on bringing more power to yourself.

This means that you should only be focusing on those things that you can control. If you are comparing yourself with others, you are really doing the opposite.

10.Practice Positive Affirmations

The next must-do for adopting a positive mental attitude is to begin practicing positive self-affirmations.

This refers to self-statements that position you towards seeing success. Your affirmations might be something like:

“I am in control of my diet and will choose healthy foods only today.”

“I am feeling strong and energized and can’t wait to hit the gym later today.”

As silly as these may sound, reciting them to yourself on a regular basis can help shift your mind frame to one that’s more positive and more based on taking action and moving forward.

If you stop and take a good look at your current self-statements, you might come to find that they are very negative.

Many people are constantly beating themselves down in their self-statements, which only serves to decrease their confidence.

Start taking steps to build yourself up.

11.Visualize Success

Along with practicing your positive self-statements, another thing that you should be doing to work on building self esteem is to visualize success.

Really stop and picture yourself in your end goal. How do you feel? What changes around you? What adjustments have you had to make in your current life to make that happen?

Visualizing success is a great way to help give your mind the boost it needs. The more you can picture yourself living in the world after you have achieved your goals, the hungrier you’ll become to make that your reality.

This can help you get past any limiting self-beliefs you have, pushing forward despite feeling scared or unconfident.

Devote 10 minutes a few times a week to simply daydreaming about what your life will be like when you reach your goals.

12.Start With Small Goals

Getting back to the point about setting realistic goals, you’ll also want to start with smaller goals.

Don’t bite off more than you can chew at once. If you’ve never been on a diet before and lack the self-confidence to know you can follow one, don’t start off trying some ultra-intense and intricate diet plan.

Start basic. Gain confidence with that first and then once you have that confidence, move on to a more challenging plan.

Likewise with your workout program. Don’t dive into some advanced workout plan if you’ve never been to the gym before. That will only backfire on you.

Instead, start small. Try 10 minutes of exercise, 4 times a week. Then build up from there.

13.Realize The Power Of Now

Finally, make sure that you realize the power of now. You are living in the world today. Don’t beat yourself up over failures or issues you’ve had in the past.

Too many people fixate on their past mistakes and turn that into their future.

Realize that on any given day, you have the power to change the future. You just have to take action and make it happen.

Don’t let the past dictate what’s in store for you. Make a commitment to yourself that no matter where you have been, the future can be better.

So keep these quick tips in mind if you are experiencing issues with your own self-confidence and belief in your ability to achieve success.

If you work hard and are constantly striving to change your self belief systems, you can realize success and become happier and healthier because of it.

And, if your issue isn’t so much about self-confidence in yourself, but rather, your lack of knowledge in how to properly structure a nutrition plan or workout, you’ll want to pick up my 12 week program where I cover all the details you need to know about getting fit, getting healthy, and optimizing your life.

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I’ve found an easy way to stay on top of my confidence is to keep myself focused on my “why.” Revisiting my goals often (waking up in the morning, before setting to work, before going to the gym, etc) and in moments where we can easily be distracted from our purpose is essential to not only building confidence, but building results.

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